The digital grapevine: team dynamics, task prioritisation and social interaction in intra-organisational digital platforms

Purpose: The use of digital platforms is continuously increasing. This naturally entails various risks and opportunities. However, these risks and opportunities have not yet been studied in the context of team familiarity and task prioritisation. Therefore, this paper evaluates how team familiarity and task prioritisation affect both task-acceptance and task-processing time within a digital platform utilising a broadcast mechanism in a logistical context. Hence, our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between digital platforms and intra-organisational team dynamics. Design/methodology/approach: This study investigated a real-world observational dataset from an intra-organisational digital work platform utilised to organise shunting tasks in yard management. We tested our hypotheses by applying a linear mixed-effects model to our dataset encompassing 146,446 yard transport missions completed between January 2022 and April 2023. Findings: Our study shows that high levels of team familiarity were associated with shorter task-processing times on a digital platform with a broadcast mechanism as explained by the transactive memory system theory. For task prioritisation, higher same-month high-priority task specialisation also resulted in shorter task-processing times, which is supported by the self-determination and social loafing theories. Same-month high-priority task specialization refers to the drivers on the yard who have repeatedly executed tasks with the same high priority within a month. Conversely, higher team familiarity levels led to longer task-acceptance times, based on the learning curve and nudge theories. Similarly, higher same-day high-priority task specialisation correlated with longer task-acceptance times due to the habitual effect. Originality/value: First, our research contributes to the limited research in the field of yard management through its empirical investigation of social interaction and real-world operational-level processes for driver teams focused on shunting transport. Second, prior research in the context of digital platforms has focused on the individual level, while our research is dedicated to the team level, which highlights the communication and social interaction of drivers with other operators in the warehouse. Third, we discuss the relationship between social interaction and informal communication along with their implications for the success of digital platforms.